What to know before accepting or rejecting the new terms of use


Updating WhatsApp allows it to share some user data with Facebook. – ALLILI MOURAD / SIPA

  • Pushed back by three months in the face of the anger of its users, the deadline to accept or refuse the update of WhatsApp expires this Saturday.
  • The application’s new terms of use allow it to share certain data, such as the phone number, with Facebook.
  • Mark Zuckerberg is looking to monetize WhatsApp from businesses and shops.

Back off to better blow up. After an outcry – and a massive migration to Signal and Telegram – in January, WhatsApp pushed back by three months the deadline to agree to its new terms of service, which grant it the right to share certain personal data with Facebook. While the reprieve expires this Saturday, the situation has not really changed: in case of refusal, WhatsApp, which Facebook seeks to monetize by allowing businesses to contact users directly, will gradually lose essential functionalities.

  • What happens if we refuse the new terms of use?

WhatsApp will gradually become unusable. Certainly, Facebook has backed down and will not automatically delete the accounts of resistant people. But from Saturday, users who decline the update will no longer be able to access their list of conversations. At first, it will still be possible to answer audio or video calls, as well as messages if notifications are activated.

At first, those who decline the update can continue to answer calls or messages. – FACEBOOK

But after “a few weeks”, the reprieve will be over. The screen inviting to accept the new charter will become permanent, and WhatsApp, an empty shell. Attention, WhatsApp usually erases an account after 120 days of inactivity. It will therefore be necessary to open the app periodically to avoid deleting the account in the event of refusal of new confitions of use.

  • What data is shared with Facebook if we accept the new rules?

There are a lot of uncertainties on this point. Most importantly, Facebook cannot read messages, whether sent via Messenger or WhatsApp. They are in effect end-to-end encrypted, and only the sender and the recipient have the key to decrypt them. What changes in a certain way, with the update, is that WhatsApp will be able to share certain information with Facebook: phone number, name, unique smartphone ID and IP address, in particular.

  • How to delete my account and migrate to an alternative app?

You can back up all your conversations, photos and files to archive them or restore them at a later date in Settings> Discussions> Backup.

A specific conversation can also be directly exported to another app like Telegram. Sur android, in Option (the three dots at the top right)> More> Export discussion. On ios : tap the name of the person or the subject of the conversation, then tap Export discussion. Be careful, you have to be in contact with the person on both applications to perform the operation, and there are often bugs, especially with grouped chats.

To end it once and for all with WhatsApp, it’s in Settings> My account> Delete my account.

  • Why such a change ?

WhatsApp cost Facebook nearly $ 20 billion in 2014 and still earns almost nothing. Mark Zuckerberg has kept his promise not to pollute conversations with advertising, but not to keep a tight wall with Facebook. WhatsApp will thus offer more services – some paid – to businesses to communicate directly with users. An airline could, for example, send a boarding pass to a passenger. Above all, a business will be able to afford an advertisement on Facebook allowing it to send a WhatsApp message to a customer who has clicked on the advertisement.

WhatsApp notably allows businesses to converse with its users.
WhatsApp notably allows businesses to converse with its users. – FACEBOOK

Clearly, Facebook needs some WhatsApp data to better monetize its subsidiary. And, by the way, develop synergies making it more difficult for the group to be dismantled by the American authorities, which opened an antitrust action in December 2020.

  • What does the European Union say?

Germany cracked down on Tuesday. Denouncing “confusing and contradictory” terms of use, the Hamburg Data Protection Authority has banned Facebook from processing WhatsApp data for the next three months. This is an emergency measure that is based on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Facebook, for its part, certifies that the German gendarme “misunderstood” the new rules and that his decision has “no legitimate basis”. “There will be no impact on the deployment of the update,” says the Californian giant. But Germany seized the European Data Protection Committee in order to obtain a decision applying to all 27. The series is, undoubtedly, not finished.



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